DIMAPUR, JANUARY 5 (MExN): The 11th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016 will announce its latest report on January 18 at 10:30am. A press note from Pratham ASER Nagaland informed that ASER Centre, the autonomous research and assessment unit of Pratham, will make its report available simultaneously in every state. It will also be webcast at the same time (link will be available on asercentre.org). The ASER survey was conducted from 2005 to 2014 in almost every rural district of India, after a one-year break in 2015, the ASER effort has resumed in 2016. As in previous years, ASER 2016 focuses on schooling, basic reading and arithmetic. The 2016 report will be the 11th report in this series. ASER is the largest annual household survey in India that focuses on children’s learning. Each year the survey reaches more than 600,000 children in the age group 3-16. About 25,000 volunteers from more than 500 partner organizations participate in the data collection, covering close to 16,000 villages. Usually more than 575 rural districts are reached annually. ASER 2016 kicked off on August 30 this year with a preparatory national workshop in Lucknow. Close to 150 team members who lead the ASER effort in their respective states attended the workshop to be trained on the ASER 2016 process. The national workshop was followed by state level workshops in every state. District level training and data collection took place immediately after the state level preparation. Like every year this enormous initiative will culminate with the national release of the ASER report in New Delhi. It may be noted that the ASER model of citizen-led assessment has been transplanted from India to 12 other countries on 3 continents. The People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network was established in 2015 to coordinate, strengthen, and promote the work of the countries implementing citizen-led assessments internationally.
